For Another Day
by AMooPoint
Summary: Henry doesn't quite have a grasp on the whole dancing thing just yet, Emma has a crush on Regina, and Once Upon a Time seems determined to keep getting this darn song stuck in my head. All fluff and stuff. Oh bother.


A/N: Fluff with ambiguous Dark One vanquishing because oh well. Songfic-ish. Kinda.

* * *

"Okay." Emma bends at the knees and gathers the bottom of the loveseat, drags it across the carpet.

It fits nicely in the corner between the bookshelf and the wall. Regina should think about moving it there permanently. Get a bigger sofa for the center of the room. One they can all fit on. The three of them. together.

"If you're gonna do this, you're gonna do it right."

Henry looks skeptical where he stands in the empty space she cleared. His bottom lip sucked in the slightest bit, his eyes narrow and piercing, always on the hunt for a scheme or trap. He probably doesn't even realize he's doing it. That's the saddest part.

It's been like that for awhile. Even after Merlin returned her to the Savior she once was. Henry's hero-worship has faltered. Lessened. Left. It slipped through her fingers the moment she'd held his girlfriend's heart in her hand and had to promise not to squeeze. As though that wasn't a given. As though the possibility existed.

Maybe it had.

Emma shakes off the thought. She's free. Cleansed, Merlin had claimed. The Blue Fairy had agreed as a second opinion. She's back. Normal. Good.

Or so they tell her.

"I'm just going to look stupid. I didn't dance in Camelot." Henry's eyes are on everything but her, and for the first time in a long time it's out of embarrassment rather than lingering fear.

God that feels good. "Well if you look stupid you can blame Neal. He was always beyond stiff."

Henry's eyes are bright and his smile is broad and her heart just about bursts. She'll talk about that man until she's breathless if it means her son will look at her like that again. She'll never stop.

"You and Dad used to dance?"

She laughs, loud and long enough that Henry's is alight with twinkling humor in anticipation for the tales to come.

"Not the fancy, fairytale kind you're thinking of, kid. It was," she trails off, searching Regina's bare walls for the word, and then she's slammed with the image of Neal in his boxers atop that shitty, rock of a motel mattress they had crawled into after hours upon hours on the road, hair wild but smile explosive as he jumped and bopped and swayed gracelessly to the static their tiny radio stuttered out.

He had reached down for her as she laughed at him, relentlessly mocking him through the love in her gaze and the bliss in her heart, and he had pulled her into the most frenzied, uncoordinated dance two people had ever performed in the history of the human race.

It had been beautiful.

"Goofy," Emma settles on, Neal's outrageous grin and long, flailing limbs cementing the word in her mind.

Henry wears that same grin in front of her. He'll have grown into those very same limbs soon. She thinks she might cry.

"Happy," she says. "Sometimes we happy-danced."

Her son wrinkles his nose. That's not a genuine thing beyond jokes. Not a true dance style he can look up on the internet and woo his young love with. It's a feeling. A joy. To some extent It's indescribable. But it is something she can share with him.

It's something that together, they can experience.

"Do you have your phone?" She holds out her hand.

Henry hesitates before digging into the pockets of his jeans to surrender the device, as though it's the last item she needs in her great nefarious plot to take over the world. She tries to pretend it doesn't hurt half as much as it does. It's all her doing, after all. The leftover reactions to her actions, consumed by darkness or not.

She finds the song in seconds. Henry has been listening to it a lot of late. Ever since he's noticed a girl in a storybook kingdom and learned that his own father had loved it dearly. Emma turns up the volume as high as it will go and presses play. There was a time, namely in prison, her stomach would churn at just remembering the opening notes, but now, they're entwined with her son and his bashful, cherry cheeks as he explains his meeting with his first crush.

Now, she can adore the notes again. She can adore the memory of climbing onto that mattress with Neal and taking his hands and bouncing without care to the beat.

Henry pales as the song fills the room and his lips pull into a grimace of embarrassment, but Emma doesn't let him wallow in his teenaged angst. She's a firm believer of dancing like no one's watching, and she gathers her hands in his. Her entire being sings when he doesn't pull away. He doesn't even flinch. Not in the former Dark One's hold.

It's just her and him. Henry and Emma. Them.

 _ **Looking from a window above**_

 _ **It's like a story of love**_

She brings one of Henry's hands to her shoulder and claims his other in her own and makes sure to keep them loose. Fun. Formless. Without pressure or structure or expectation.

 _ **Can you hear me?**_

"Wait," Henry says as she guides him about the empty living room, brow furrowed.

 _ **Came back only yesterday**_

 _ **I'm moving farther away**_

"Isn't this what the girl does? You gave me the girl part."

 _ **Want you near me**_

Feeling more like herself than she has in weeks, she takes him off guard, pushes him into a low dip with a wicked smirk. "What would make you think that?"

 _ **All I needed was the love you gave**_

His boisterous laughter explodes in the room and sets her heart pounding. They're in New York and he loves her unconditionally and there's no such thing as magic.

 _ **All I needed for another day**_

She's in a shitty motel on unwashed sheets and Neal loves her unconditionally and there's no such thing as destiny.

 _ **And all I ever knew**_

It's her and him and them. And for the first time in her life she's actually enough for someone. And they're beyond enough for her.

 _ **Only you**_

And it's all enough.

 _ **Sometimes when I think of her name**_

 _ **When it's only a game**_

"It's not about guys and girls, kid. It's following and leading."

 _ **And I need you**_

Her eyes are pulled to the open archway on the far side of the room where an audience has gathered, having followed the music. They wandered over from the kitchen where Emma had deserted them earlier and slipped off with Henry.

 _ **Listen to the words that you say**_

 _ **It's getting harder to stay**_

Emma's gaze slides over Robin and Roland, dwells on her parents and her brother for only a brief moment, and settles on Regina for a fraction of a second. Just as fast, her attention returns to the boy in her grasp.

 _ **When I see you**_

She had escaped their conversation when they had, all of them, exhausted her.

 _ **All I needed was the love you gave**_

When she didn't feel like listening to everyone discussing the formalities of getting the upcoming ball to celebrate the _Savior's Return_ together.

 _ **All I needed for another day**_

When she felt even less like listening as their talk inevitably devolved into her mother yet again explaining the wonders of Neal's first steps.

 _ **And all I ever knew**_

When she couldn't stand watching the gentle, absent caress of Robin's fingers along Regina's waist while they chatted.

 _ **Only you**_

Emma raises their joined hands to pilot Henry into a clumsy twirl and he obeys without resistance because he's always been such a beautiful, giving boy. "Get with the program."

He's laughing again as the instrumentals start and she prays that it will last. That they can be like this again. Always.

That she'll never again be the cause of his pain.

That he'll never have to doubt her.

That she can be his mom.

Ma.

And everything that means.

"I think, if you're looking for a lady who knows what she's doing," she says, a smile on her lips as he eyes lock with her mother's, "Grandma should take the floor."

Mary Margaret beams at Emma and moves to join them. She takes her daughter's place when Emma steps back, and gently coaxs Henry's hands into the proper hold. His face is flushed at the suddenness of everyone's attention, but he knows better, sweet boy that he is, then to deny Snow White her simple pleasures. His grandmother shows him how to move her. How to guide her. And with her ever constant sweetness she smiles as he tromps on her feet.

Besieged by a fit of giggles, Roland tugs on his father's fingers. He guides the man to the couch where he clamors up on the cushions, bouncing to the beat of the song while holding on to Robin for support.

David stands near his wife and grandson. Neal cooing in his grasp, he sways to music, a content grin stealing his lips, betraying his love for the life that is finally, _finally,_ within his family's grasp.

And then there's Regina. Standing in the archway, head against the wood, face overwhelmed by the smile that formed at the mere sight of their son. The one that always forms. She's gorgeous, and Emma remembers Neal. Her Neal. Before watches and puppets and curses. For a brief moment in her life, for someone, she had been enough.

She had been enough and the world had felt like it might have a place for her.

And she had never wanted to get in the way of pixie dust. She had never meant to defy and disrespect the authority of a lion tattoo. But she can't shake it, that feeling in her gut. The one that leaps at Regina's smile and shrinks at her temper. The one that says that she could be - would be - enough. That maybe here, in this living room, under this roof, within this song, is the world's place for her.

Emma stretches her hand forward, wiggles her fingers in summons.

 _ **All I needed was the love you gave**_

She grins at Regina's raised eyebrow, laughs at her pout and frantic shake of the head.

 _ **All I needed for another day**_

"You don't want to dance with your family?"

Regina's face is soft, then hard, then soft again.

 _ **And all I ever knew**_

And then it's a flurry of heat as her hand finds Emma's, and they're face to face, and they're timidly swaying, and Regina is staring up at her, eyes searching, like every question that's steadily been forming between them is about to be answered.

 _ **Only you**_

Emma forces a relaxed smile. Because this isn't going to be a demand or an ultimatum. She's not extending that or any sort of grand proclamation. No sobbing pleas for a decision to be made between fate and feelings. This is just a dance. A statement.

A hat in the ring.

 _ **This is going to take a long time**_

Her hand finds Regina's waist for the first time. A new touch between them. Something unexplored. Uncharted.

 _ **And I wonder what's mine**_

Regina's eyes dance between Emma and the back of Robin's head as her hand finds Emma's upper arm, confusion all over her face. She suspects, Emma sees, but she's not sure, so she let's Emma sway with her and tell her just what this is.

 _ **Can't take no more**_

Emma doesn't let her eyes wander. Not to discover what she's already certain of, that David is watching with contemplative curiosity, that Snow's brow is furrowed in quiet concern, that poor, simple Robin's head is turned towards his child.

 _ **Wonder if you'll understand**_

Whatever answers Regina wants, she'll get, audience be damned. Emma loosens her grip on Regina's hand, shifts her palm to interlock their fingers, then squeezes tight once more.

 _ **It's just the touch of your hand**_

Regina glances between their connection and Emma's face, breath shallow, and to keep from kissing the pained confusion away, Emma collects the woman more firmly against her. Regina tenses in her arms for the shortest of instants

 _ **Behind a closed door**_

Their bodies meet completely and mold as one. Side to side, forward and back, hearts pounding yet peaceful. Serene and leisurely and comfortable. Everything they've always had the potential to be and never quite found.

 _ **All I needed was the love you gave**_

Emma cranes her neck, pushes her nose through Regina's hair, brushes her lips along the edge of her ear. "All I needed for another day," She whispers.

Regina's breath hitches. Emma has said everything she has to on the matter.

 _ **And all I ever knew**_

She's family, broken as she is, she loves, for whatever her love is worth, and she is an option, should Regina only be willing to claim it.

"Only you," Emma sings her soft promise.

Regina relaxes, truly relaxes, and maybe, for once, she's considering every choice before she makes a decision.

And there, in the midsts of their lives, despite whatever consequence may befall them, Regina takes the first step. She lets her forehead fall to Emma's shoulder, and it might mean everything or it might mean nothing, but it's certainly something, and for the moment it's enough.

It's more than enough.

Emma pulls back. She grins and takes Regina by surprise. Dips her, just as she had Henry, and cackles at the startled sound that escapes the woman's lips because maybe she has a little bit of darkness left in her after all. Regina laughs too, as soon as she gives up on scowling.

It's goofy.

David sways with Neal and Robin twists with Roland and Henry steps on Mary Margaret's toes.

It's happy.

There's a warmth in her that expands. It grows with her little brother's giggles. Broadens with her mother's humming. Spreads with the look sparkling deep in Regina's eyes as she gazes up at her.

It's enough.

Whatever it is.

And even if they had never found Merlin. Even if he hadn't been able to save her. Emma knows that the warmth of this moment would have obliterated the darkness all on it's own.


End file.
